Syntax Untangler

Teach your students how to figure out tricky texts in any language.

Syntax Untangler is an online activity that asks the learner to visually mark up a short primary text in any language, in order to improve small-scale reading skills. Any instructor can easily create and publish their own Syntax Untangler content (go to the Instructor Tools link below).

Syntax Untangler is particularly designed for training language learners to recognize and parse linguistic features. Here are some things you could ask your students to do:

Identify the parts of a separable-prefix verb within a German sentence.

Draw where a syntax structure begins and ends in a short Chinese text.

Mark and differentiate all the instances of alliteration, consonance, and assonance in a bit of poetry.

In a bit of Javascript, point out all the statements in a loop that might increment the loop counter.

Sustainability

Syntax Untangler is an expression of the Wisconsin Idea and is available at no cost for worldwide public use. It is also an open-source project. You can get the source code and help build Syntax Untangler at our SourceForge site.

File last modified August 29, 2014

Feedback, questions or accessibility issues: Alan Ng, Sorry, you must turn on Javascript to contact me.